Whenever I boot Ubuntu, I get a message that it cannot mount my windows partition, and I can choose to either wait, skip or manually mount.

When I try to enter my Windows partition through Nautilus I get a message saying that this partition is hibernated and that I need to enter the file system and properly close it, something I have done with no problem so I don't know why this happens.

Do you hibernate it or do you shutdown Windows before you see the error message? I have this problem too, but I am sure I shutdown Windows 8 Release Preview instead of hibernating it. What version of Windows do you use?
–
yanglifu90Aug 26 '12 at 7:22

10 Answers
10

A bug has been filed about the Nautilus dialog you are seeing as it recommends a potentially dangerous option that could result in data loss. Please do not run the command in this dialog unless you want to delete your saved Windows session and potentially lose unsaved work.

Explanation: Why Linux can't open hibernated Windows partitions:

You are seeing this error because you hibernated Windows instead of
turning it off the normal way (in newer versions of Windows, hibernate
might be the default option).

Hibernating saves the current state information to the hard disk and then powers down the computer.

Shutting down the computer closes all programs and ends all running processes before powering down the computer.

When you turn off Windows by hibernating it, you are essentially
pausing the system and saving all of that information (into a big file
called hiberfil.sys) This way when you resume from hibernation all
of your applications and files will be exactly how you left them. It
also sets a flag in hiberfil.sys to let other Operating Systems know
that Windows is hibernated.

Making changes to your Windows (ntfs) partition while it is
hibernated could be dangerous--it could cause Windows to not resume
from hibernation or to crash after resuming. Because of this, the
tool (ntfs-3g) that mounts (opens) the partition will not mount it
in read-write mode if it sees a hibernation flag. As such, Nautilus,
the default file browser, will not be able to automatically open this
partition--hence the error message that you see--because it is trying
to open it in read-write mode.

Workaround for all versions of Windows:

There are three ways to mount a hibernated Windows partition:

Boot into Windows and power down the system by shutting it down
completely. You may then boot back into Ubuntu and the partition will mount in read-write mode automatically when you open it in Nautilus. Note that the "Shut Down" option may not be the one
displayed in your start menu by default. You may need to click the
button next to it to see further options.

Manually mount the filesystem in read only mode.

Check to see if you have a mount point (folder for mounting your partition in) for your Windows partition in the folder /media
using this command:

ls /media

If you don't see a folder for your Windows partition, you should create one with the following command:

sudo mkdir /media/windows

Next, mount the partition in read-only mode onto this folder with this command:

mount -t ntfs-3g -o ro /dev/sda3 /media/windows

Note that you should change /media/windows if your mountpoint is called something else.

Now you will be able to view/open files on your Windows partition using any program in Ubuntu. However you will not be able to write
to the partition or modify any files as it is in read only mode.

If you need to mount the partition in read-write mode and are not
able to or willing to boot into Windows and shut it down completely
there is a third option. However, it is not included here because it completely deleteshiberfil.sys and will cause you to lose all
unsaved information in the hibernated Windows programs. The following is a quotation
from man ntfs-3g about the option that would be used to do this.

remove_hiberfile
Unlike in case of read-only mount, the read-write mount is
denied if the NTFS volume is hibernated. One needs either to
resume Windows and shutdown it properly, or use this option
which will remove the Windows hibernation file. Please note,
this means that the saved Windows session will be completely
lost. Use this option under your own responsibility.

Solution (only for Windows 8):

There is a new feature in Windows 8 called Fast Startup. If this feature is enabled (which it is by default), Windows 8 does not actually completely shutdown when you choose shutdown. Instead, it does a "hybrid shutdown". This is something like hibernating; it makes booting Windows 8 back up faster. So, you need to disable this feature to be able to shut it down properly, and be able to mount the Windows partitions. To do this, boot into your Windows 8 and:

Note: disabling Fast Startup will most likely make your Windows 8 take a longer time to boot. There are no "exact" numbers, but let's say that if it took you 10 seconds to boot into Windows 8, it will now take you 50 seconds after disabling this feature.

1. Open Control Panel in the small icons view and click on Power Options.2. Click on Choose what the power buttons do.3. Click on Change settings that are currently unavailable.4. Uncheck Turn on fast startup (recommended).Click on the numbers above to see screenshots.

Click on Save changes. Now, shutdown Windows 8 and boot back into Ubuntu. You'll be able to mount without getting errors.

I'd like to add that there is yet another way to generate this error with Windows 8. Thanks to the new hybrid shutdown option (which also happens to be the default), the only way for an ordinary user to access the primary Windows partition is to boot Windows and then restart the system - forcing Windows to perform a full shutdown.
–
Nathan OsmanFeb 12 '13 at 19:04

1

None of these works for me. The only I am able to mount Win 8 partition on ubuntu is to press "restart" in windows, then boot ubuntu.
–
arkilusAug 24 '13 at 18:59

2

Hello, I change the seatings for windows 8.1 as you mention. But unfortunately i still have the error massage I had previously. please help me,
–
rashed azadApr 25 '14 at 12:08

Man this totally saved my ass. I couldn't get into Win8, so this was the only solution for me. Thanks a lot
–
MNVOHAug 19 '14 at 8:54

1

I am not sure fixing an NTFS partition from Ubuntu is a good idea for a hibernating fast startup Windows 8.1. Instead, I solved the problem from within Windows 8.1: powercfg /h off
–
Bill The ApeDec 31 '14 at 0:29

My solution was to call a mntwindows script in /etc/rc.local. This script would check for hibernation and if hibernated mount as read only. In order to make sure the script may always be called I placed it in /bin and marked it as executable. The contents of the script are as follows

In my experience adempewolff's popular and helpful answer above was necessary, but not sufficient, to allow me to mount my Windows NTFS partition for writing with Ubuntu. As instructed elsewhere I turned Fast Startup off before trying to install Ubuntu and I removed the Hibernate Option on the "Shutdown" menu, too.

I still couldn't write to my Windows partition from Ubuntu.

I found I also had to boot Windows 8.1, start a Windows authorized command line (right click on the Windows button on the bottom left to get to this option easily), allow it through the Windows authorization box, and then enter the command:

powercfg /h off

You can check the results with:

powercfg /a

After making this change I was able to freely access the Windows 8.1 partition from Ubuntu, whether I quit Windows by shutting down or by restarting.

I found that I was able to later reverse this and still access the partition (but keeping Fast Startup unchecked at all times, as above, and never asking for Windows hibernation of course). The command to reverse it is, predictably:

powercfg /h on

I assume something was left over from Windows installation that needed to be cleared by booting with hibernation turned off in this particular way.

There should be no reason to undo the first step like this as far as I know--it may provide a bit of extra safety to leave powercfg /h off.

It is more than likely that this is happening because you are booting from a Windows 8 system. What they have done is make it so that when you turn off your computer it really goes into hibernation for a quicker boot when you switch it on again.

What you will need to do is to go into the Control Panel section of Windows 8, navigate to power options and disable the quick start up option so that when you shut down, you will actually have shut down your system and as a result the files on the partition will be able to be accessed and edited.

To add to the answer you can go into Windows 7 or Windows 8 (W8: this is the default power-off action, it isn't a true shutdown in a sense), open a command line with super user privileges and type powercfg -h off.

The caveat is now you Windows computer will not be able to Hibernate at all. However, you will be able to mount your Windows partitions without doing surgery on it.